Jasesq

Shared posts

19 Dec 03:48

Dionne Warwick’s Twitter Account Is the Black Auntie Hug I’m Wrapping Myself in Right Now

by Briana Lawrence

Dionne Warwick performs onstage during the "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives" Premiere Concert during the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival at Radio City Music Hall on April 19, 2017 in New York City.

Therapy: expensive.

Scrolling through Dionne Warwick’s Twitter feed: free.

The legendary singer has been incredibly active on social media lately and it’s been an absolute treat to watch her engage with everyone. I can’t help but think of my own mother who, by the way, refers to it as The Twitter.

The vibe of the self-titled Auntie Dionne is exactly that, the cool aunt in your family who most definitely gives the best presents and passes out cash if you show off a bunch of As on your report card. She’s taken to Twitter to talk about everything she’s learning, ranging from popular video game franchises to various marginalized communities.

I’ve picked out a couple of my favorite tweets, but I implore you to check out the entire feed yourself.

But first, this incredible bio:

Screenshot of Dionne Warwick's bio

Perfection. I ain’t even mad, Auntie Dionne, bios take too much effort and Google is free.

  • The pinned tweet

This is such an important message and it’s right at the top of her page. As a Black bisexual woman, one of the things I’ve been told when dealing with bigotry is that there’s a subsect of people who just won’t understand me, and may even hate me, because they’re from a different era where it was commonplace to discriminate against certain groups. To see a woman who is from that era say “I’m here to learn” proves that you can absolutely adjust your way of thinking, you just have to be willing to do it.

Sure, some of the terminologies may not have been as prevalent back then when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, for example, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way to learn now. Hell, I’m decades younger than Auntie Dionne and there are terms I’ll be learning right alongside her.

We don’t know it all as people, and will never know it all, which is why it’s important to listen. The learning experience is lifelong, it doesn’t stop when you hit a certain again and you certainly shouldn’t use it as an excuse for hatred because “back in my day harassing this marginalized group was ok.”

(Spoiler: oppression was never ok so stop telling me that your grandparents are racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. cuz “old age.” Tell them to take a page from Auntie Dionne.)

  • Understanding what the kids are saying these days

I have nothing deep to add to this. This is straight-up my mother, who will legit call me on the phone to ask me to define something to her. Recently, I had to explain what a headcanon was because of an article I wrote. Auntie Dionne is right. Black women WILL get on the phone, y’all.

Fortunately, someone explained it to her.

And she was thankful for it :)

  • Asking the important questions

Auntie? Did he follow back though? That’s what I wanna know.

  •  When a Black woman says she’s proud of you it’s scientifically proven to clear your skin

In an earlier tweet, Auntie Dionne asked about everyone’s favorite emerging artists. Chloe x Halle was mentioned, as they should be, and this was the exchange:

My entire soul is cleansed by this. Getting a Black woman’s approval for what you’re out here doing is always an added HP boost for me, especially if she throws in a sis when she says it.

  • Expert gif usage

Do you see that? That’s years of practice, the kind of gif usage training that takes place on a secluded mountain where you meditate directly under a waterfall.

Ah. See? She knew what to do before she got on here, I most definitely floundered about like a misguided guppy. Auntie Dionne, I shall continue to monitor you so that I may learn your refined skills.

  • Girl???

While we definitely want to make sure our beloved Auntie is on the right track, we must remember to address her properly.

This was in reference to Auntie Dionne finding out that she could search her name and see what’s being said about her. A dangerous practice indeed, so I can understand the concern. While she definitely appreciates what we’re all showing her she made sure to point out how she’s not a girl anymore. Apologies were made and all was forgiven.

  • The #HeyDionne tag

In her ongoing attempt to learn and grow, Auntie Dionne came up with the #HeyDionne tag where people could discuss different topics with her. This was in the realm of diversity, including how to be better about accessibility, inclusion, and representation. Auntie Dionne took the time to boost particular responses she felt strongly about and even mentioned things she would do from now own to make sure she was being a better person. There’s quite a bit going on in this tag but I’ll share some highlights.

  • Auntie Dionne and Animal Crossing

Oh boy, this made my entire existence! I know I keep referencing my mother, but when I started playing Animal Crossing this year she had very similar reactions!

“What do you do in the game?” My mother asked me. I explained it to her and I could just hear how perplexed she was because “Don’t you do all that stuff in real life?”

Full disclosure, no, I don’t, because I don’t try and sneak up on scorpions, plant bags of money to get money trees, and put up wallpaper where it literally snows all around me (the last two I wish I could do but the scorpions can GTFO).

At one point she thought that you cross different animal breeds, at another point she referred to it as Animal Kingdom, and eventually, she got into the habit of asking if I got together with my friends to play that one game where you decorate your house.

So here’s Auntie Dionne’s journey into Animal Crossing. Did anyone tell her that you take out a loan from a raccoon and make money from turnips, insects, and fish?

Careful, Auntie, this is how the descent into 800+ hours of blue rose breeding begins.

  • This break-up advice

Someone tweeted at Auntie Dionne and asked for good breakup song suggestions. This was her response:

Damn, I just… wow, yeah, do something fun! Try and cheer yourself up! I hear Animal Crossing is a good serotonin boost.

I’m gonna end this on this last tweet which I’m sure the answer would be a resounding YES!

Take care, Auntie! Thank you for sharing your experiences with all of us! You always say goodnight when you logoff so I’ll do the same: goodnight!

(Image: Theo Wargo/Getty Staff)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

 

The post Dionne Warwick's Twitter Account Is the Black Auntie Hug I'm Wrapping Myself in Right Now first appeared on The Mary Sue.

29 Nov 20:43

Photo



11 May 12:01

A.V. Club Live: Aaron Lee Tasjan performs “Ready To Die” in The A.V. Club studio

by Baraka Kaseko

Singer-songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan stopped by the A.V. Club offices in the midst of his world tour to treat us to a live performance. In the clip above, he performs “Ready To Die,” a track from his 2016 album, Silver Tears.

Tasjan is on tour now. Dates are listed here.

07 Feb 13:25

Newswire: Bill O’Reilly did not apologize for calling Putin a killer

by Sam Barsanti

Earlier today, we reported that Russia had issued a statement demanding that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly apologize for calling Vladimir Putin “a killer” during his pre-Super Bowl interview with Donald Trump. At that point, it was impossible to predict whether or not O’Reilly would cave to Trump’s best friend and issue an apology for his remark or if he’d stick to his (metaphorical) pro-America guns and refuse to back down. Really, though, there’s only one way this could’ve played out: with O’Reilly leaning on his “I’m the smartest guy in the room” attitude and standing by his assertion that Putin is, in fact, a killer. After all, O’Reilly didn’t get where he is today by apologizing, he did it by screaming “fuck it” and doing it live (so to speak).

According to Deadline, O’Reilly opened his show on Fox ...

30 Nov 17:24

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Drunk History Episode Was Everything You Dreamed It Would Be - As the founders intended.

by Dan Van Winkle

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda knows a thing or two about Alexander Hamilton and American history, and he really let that shine last night on Comedy Central’s Drunk History. Above, Miranda narrates Hamilton’s school and military career, and below, things heat up a bit with Hamilton’s affair, which no one really thought he should talk about in the first place.

Not only is Miranda’s narration as lively and unique as you’d expect after writing one of the most celebrated musicals in recent memory on this very topic, but the cast—featuring Aubrey Plaza as Aaron Burr and Alia Shawkat as Alexander Hamilton—is flat out amazing and takes every bit as much of the wonderful liberties as the Broadway show.

Take a peek at some of the other … historical moments below, and head over to watch the full episode yourself, complete with a hilarious Questlove cameo, if you’ve got a cable TV provider with which to log into Comedy Central’s website.

(image via screengrab)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google+.

20 Jun 19:16

Radiohead's "Creep" vs. The Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe"

by Andrea James
Jasesq

I don't like Radiohead, but boy do I like this song when Radiohead's not singing it (see also: Postmodern Jukebox). This is awesome.

moon-loungers

All the news about the "Stairway to Heaven" lawsuit reminded me of this lovely arrangement of another creative dispute: Radiohead's "Creep" vs. The Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe." (more…)

24 Apr 10:55

Art Museums Should Be Allowed to Participate in Both Sides of the Free Market

by Kevin Drum

New York City's Metropolitan Museum recently announced that it was running deficits and needed to restructure its operations—most likely including layoffs. Michael O'Hare is agog:

The Met has a collection worth at least $60 billion, thousands and thousands of objects almost none of which (by object count or square feet of picture) is ever shown or ever will be....Selling just two percent (off the bottom by quality or importance, of course, and much more than two percent of it by object count), for example, could endow free admission forever. Selling .3 percent would cover that pesky deficit, also forever. And the smaller museums and collectors who would buy works freed from the catacombs would show it.

Nothing in the Met’s mission statement suggests its purpose is to accumulate as much art as possible where no-one sees it. But the Met and all the other big art museums have insulated themselves from this sort of awkward question by writing a code of ethics that forbids any museum from selling anything except to buy more art.

Rich art lovers....Do not give a penny or so much as a tiny watercolor to any museum that doesn’t recuse itself from this provision of the AAMD rules. When a couple of big ones like the Met show some leadership, things will change, and our engagement with art will improve in many ways.

Selling off artwork is called deaccessioning, and it's become increasingly common—and controversial—in recent years. The AAMD does indeed forbid it, unless the proceeds are used to buy other art, but during the Great Recession several small museums sold off parts of their collection in order to cover operating costs anyway. The AAMD was not amused. When the Delaware Art Museum sold off a William Holman Hunt painting a couple of years ago, the AAMD asked its members to basically suspend any collaboration with the museum.

The art world generally believes that deaccessioning is a horror because art is a public trust blah blah blah. This is basically just word salad. More prosaically, it's probably true that a strong taboo against deaccessioning prevents art museums from using their collections as an ATM machine whenever they run into a patch of trouble. That said, it's hard to understand why art museums, alone among all the institutions of mankind, should be required to never sell anything they own. Perhaps this statement from the AAMD about the Delaware Art Museum's action tells the real story: "It is also sending a clear signal to its audiences that private support is unnecessary, since it can always sell additional items from its collection to cover its costs."

We can't have that, can we? That would prevent museums from raising money with scary campaigns about shutting down or firing half their staff or cutting hours to the bone.

But what if rules about deaccessioning were abandoned? What would happen? My guess is: nothing much. Museums that gained a reputation for doing it routinely would indeed suffer a drop in private donations, and that would act as a natural brake on the practice. Other museums would benefit, as they were freed to occasionally sell off less important parts of their collection in order to pay bills or undertake other worthy endeavors. And huge museums like the Met, with caverns full of artwork that's never shown and has limited scholarly use, could not only shore up their finances but improve the world by selling pieces to smaller, more specialized museums that would show it. In the end, a free market in art would most likely produce a net increase in public welfare, just as free markets do in nearly every other area.

I'm with O'Hare: the taboo against deaccessioning is way overdone. We should give it a rest.

19 Nov 15:08

Michael Shannon at “The Night Before” Los Angeles Premiere

by Tom and Lorenzo
Jasesq

LOL.

Michael Shannon attends the premiere of Columbia Pictures’ “The Night Before” at The Theatre at The Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

 

There can be no doubt:

Michael-Shannon-The-Night-Before-Los-Angeles-Premiere-Fashion-Tom-Lorenzo-Site (1)

Michael Shannon has won the red carpet for the week.

 

Michael-Shannon-The-Night-Before-Los-Angeles-Premiere-Fashion-Tom-Lorenzo-Site (2)

We don’t know what we love more about this.

 

Michael-Shannon-The-Night-Before-Los-Angeles-Premiere-Fashion-Tom-Lorenzo-Site (3)

Is it the “I LIGHT UP” sticker?

 

Michael-Shannon-The-Night-Before-Los-Angeles-Premiere-Fashion-Tom-Lorenzo-Site (4)

Or the perpetual commitment to stony face? Because let’s face it, if he was grinning like an idiot, this wouldn’t be nearly as funny.

We just hope he put band-aids over his nipples because that thing looks like it’s likely to cause a rash. Generally speaking, knitwear that lights up should have limited contact with one’s skin, we’ve found.
[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

17 Nov 16:26

So fall! Such good!

by Peter
Jasesq

yum.

Colder weather urges cooking in a way that summer’s insouciant plenitude cannot rival. Now that we’re down to about a third of the garden, it’s all roots and greens out there (though bolstered immeasurably in the kitchen by the deep benches of pantry and freezer). Their flavor—the sheer information, the resolution and detail in each bite of humble leaf or root, sweetened by frosts and elevated to center stage by the departure of the tender competition—presents targets both easy and challenging. Easy, because a fat fall turnip needs little embellishing to glow, and challenging because families are wont to clamor for novelty when it comes to dinner.

This was a simple bowl of food, but that simplicity needed care to properly express itself. Chief among its requirements was time; I worked at home all day so I had that luxury. This might be more of a weekend dish, say a lazy grey Sunday supper, unless you have a good crock pot. Big ugly cuts of inexpensive lamb from a local pastured animal—sold as “stew meat”—present opportunities far beyond what their appearance and label might suggest. These chunks of shoulder do well in braises, sure, but they transform into sublime succulence after a few hours of dry cooking inside a Dutch oven.

I rubbed the meat with salt, and with freshly ground toasted spices: black pepper, cloves, coriander, cardamom, a star anise and a dried Thai chili. The total amount of spices added up to maybe a tablespoon for a couple of pounds of meat (including bones), so they did not overpower; this was neither curry nor tagine, but merely roast lamb. I also added a generous shake of the homegrown herbes de Provence, happily ensconced in two one-liter jars. It’s a source of great comfort to have a winter’s supply of this herb mixture, so integral to so many Mediterranean meals.

Thus rubbed, I browned the meat all over in the cast iron Dutch oven, using only its own fat to lubricate it. Once suitably caramelized, I added a big double handful of small red onions and shallots, halved but not peeled, and a head of garlic separated into cloves but not stripped of their papery skins. Leaving the skins on allows alliums to caramelize to a sticky pudding without drying out, much as the lidded vessel keeps the meat moist through hours of cooking. I put the pot into the oven at 425˚ for about half an hour, then turned it down to about 350˚ and let it go for 90 minutes or so. The house at this point smelled absolutely outrageous, and it was difficult to concentrate. For the last hour (or two; once it gets low you can let it ride) I dropped it to 225˚.

IMG_8117

As the dinner hour approached, I chopped up a variety of roots that I had dug earlier: parsnip, turnip, salsify, and carrot. I roasted them all with olive oil, salt, and more dried herbs; I left out garlic or onion because there was so much already in the pot with the meat. I also boiled a handful of small Yukon Gold potatoes and made a vivid pesto of arugula, sorrel, and parsley with a sprig of mint and a couple of sage leaves thrown in for complexity and lamby simpatico. (I also threw in a forkful of oil-cured green chilies, a mainstay of most meals since I made them back in late September.) I tossed the boiled potatoes in butter and a spoon of pesto.

IMG_8120

The alliums needed to be peeled, revealing insides that had turned to glorious umber mush, slick with lamb fat and smelling like pure love. I set them aside and pulled the shreddy meat off the bones. Each bowl got some roasted roots, a few potatoes, a pile of meat, and a lashing of alliums, followed by a dollop of pesto on top.

It would be hard to overstate how good this was, what a sexy combination of fresh and slow-cooked. You don’t need me to tell you how good roasted garlic is, but garlic roasted along with onions and shallots and herbs in lamb fat produces one of the world’s most perfect condiments. Clean green pesto and plump potatoes meshed with the chewy, tender, oven sweetened roots, and the pieces of meat had chewy brown outsides and meltingly tender interiors. Stews and braises are of course lovely cold-weather fare, but this dry method gets to an essential characteristic of slow-roast meat: the compelling duality between the deeply umamified and maillarded exterior and the juicy lubrication of the interior. It’s more primal than stew, and brings out the particularly gamy complexity of pastured lamb.

 

IMG_8133

 

15 Nov 20:20

Paris and Beirut and …

by Fred Clark

In the wake of tragedy and horror — whether from a natural disaster or the evil that humans do — there is a sense that one should say something. If one is to speak at all, then one must speak of this.

But there is little that can be said. We can express our horror and grief, extend our “thoughts and prayers” to the victims and to those who knew and loved them. We can mourn with those who mourn.

Yet after calamity, we seem to wish that someone, somewhere, would say something else, something more. We want to hear someone explain this, explain how to correct it somehow, how to prevent it from ever happening again (or, less nobly, how to prevent it from ever happening to us). And there can be a pressure, or a temptation, to try to be the person who says all of that. Our desperate need to hear something that will make sense of it all can lead us to try to say something that might appear to make sense of it all.

And related to that is the pressure not to say the thing that none of us wants to hear — that maybe we can’t explain this or make sense of it or tidily reassure one another and ourselves that everything will always be sensible and understandable and fair and safe.

Here’s a snippet from one of those lost and recently recovered old Left Behind posts that seems relevant today:

I moved to Everybody’s Hometown shortly after the accident and I had lunch that week with a friend who serves as a pastor there. Five teens from the local high school had been riding together in a car that was going too fast to negotiate a notorious curve. Some of the funerals were at my friend’s church. He was exhausted, beaten down. During the course of that meal, he cycled through all of Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief several times over.

Five children in a town of about 10,000 turned out to be an unbearably high percentage. The families were distraught. The high school was devastated. No one in town seemed untouched or unaffected or unscathed. People needed answers and many of them were turning to my friend. He is a wise man with a rock-solid faith, but when I met him for lunch that day he seemed to want to run away or hide or beat the rock like Moses and scream at the silent heavens.

The people of our town needed to hear some explanation and they were turning to my friend to provide one. Wasn’t that his job, after all — to make sense of all of this senselessness and to explain it to the rest of us? But what we wanted him to say was something impossible and untrue. We wanted him to give us words that would make the loss of those children seem like something fair, something sensible, something we could live with. And there was no true thing he could tell us that could do any of that.

All he could do was what he did: Mourn with those who mourn. Stand with and stand beside others in the senselessness and unfairness of it all. Redeem the time, for the days are evil. Strengthen the things that remain. Knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

 

22 Sep 22:52

Cultural Critic Ta-Nehisi Coates to Write Black Panther for Marvel!

by Stubby the Rocket
Jasesq

WHUT.

Shut up and take my money.

Black Panther series cover

Critically acclaimed author and cultural critic Ta-Nehisi Coates will be tackling a new medium next spring: he’ll write a new Black Panther series for Marvel! “A Nation Under Our Feet,” the yearlong story line written by Coates and drawn by Brian Stelfreeze, will see Black Panther tackling a violent uprising in Wakanda, and, we’re going to assume, will also provide commentary on tensions in current, non-Wakandan society. The title was inspired by Steve Hahn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration.

Coates, who is a correspondent for The Atlantic, and whose book of essays, Between the World and Me, is both a bestseller and a nominee for the National Book Award’s nonfiction prize, also happens to be a giant comics nerd. Speaking with The New York Times, Coates said that “It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.” When he began reading comics in the mid-1980s, he was introduced to three important characters: Storm, the leader of the X-Men; Monica Rambeau, who had taken on the name Captain Marvel; and James Rhodes, who was Iron Man. “I’m sure it meant something to see people who looked like me in comic books. It was this beautiful place that I felt pop culture should look like.”

You can read more about the project over at The New York Times, and check out Coates’ conversation with Marvel editor Sana Amanat about the importance of Ms. Marvel!